


these violent delights

by anyarysm



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, no but tom riddle's fixation with the mouth is something i'd like to go back to and explore, nothing about the politics here makes sense, post-writing: [shrug emoji] gold star i tried?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:15:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14122953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anyarysm/pseuds/anyarysm
Summary: Cheiloproclitic; being attracted to someone’s lips





	these violent delights

**Author's Note:**

> Written about two or so years ago. 
> 
> Tom Riddle's head is a dark place to be, man. The political climate of this is tenuous at best, but we've suspended our disbelief for less.

Nobody had wanted Tom Riddle before _._

The recognition, non-existent then heavy—

Everyone,  _everyone_ , grows unsettled after.

There is something chilling about him, about this strange pretty  _haunting_ boy who’s mastered excess, memorised the nuanceof it, carried the hairline fractured spine it reinforced. Something not at all  _sated, safe, sane._ He wears the knowledge like a bespoke suit, fitted and tailored for whatever expensive alleyway murder or ballroom dance in which he places himself; he wears it  _well._

He is charm-soaked manners and honey-glazed motions and knife-work precision, calculated and categorically brilliant and it doesn’t matter that they used to think him  _expendable_ , it doesn’t matter that he was  _just another orphan boy_ , no, because who he is now— _who he’d become—_ well, he has a name, and everyone is  _afraid._

 

 

 

He is employed as a political adviser for a campaign when he meets Hermione Granger, an intern for the opposing party.

Tom is, by far, the youngest in the board, but already, he’s made himself  _indispensable._ They will lose if he leaves; they will be brought down. The others, arrogant and newly minted and low-level, with their aristocratic last names and their connections, they sneer at him and his fancy degrees, they shoot him down with authoritative jargon - but even they understand he can’t be let go.

It’s—

Plausible deniability is defined as the faculty to deny the knowledge of, or take responsibility for, any damnable action or decision, via deliberate disassociation from any of it. Evidence is arbitrary, doubt is cultivated,  _you never sign your name and you keep your eye on the bottom line_. It’s a game he plays because he’s thorough, because he never gets caught, because there are no rules but one: justification  _limits_. The only result worth anticipating is absolute power.

The others have never understood this—they strain under the weight of what it takes, and they snap-splatter all over the walls, messy and metallic, DNA-tainted and fingers pointed, and Tom—Tom can afford to  _laugh,_ isn’t put at a disadvantage by their inefficiency, it is a  _sport,_ he is  _amused,_ he grins as a precursor to the almost ritualistic way he slides his hands into surgical gloves for when he dips his ledgers in blood. The struggle of it is, for those who itch and seethe and boil, the struggle of it is knowing instinctively where to look for the tell-tale bone grind of the skeletons in his closet, and finding ash on the soles of their own boots.

He is employed as a political adviser for a campaign when he meets Hermione Granger, an intern for the opposing party, and his knee-jerk observations of her are clinical prods for weakness: self-righteous, and overcompensating, and vicious, but also, brilliant, and ruthless, and  _hungry._ The recognition of it is snap-quick sudden, non-existent then axial to the almost imperceptible clenching of his mouth.

It makes him shudder, makes him clench his hands into fists and bite the inside of his bottom lip in anticipation, it will be  _beautiful_ , what he will do to her. Already, he listens to how she speaks, in clipped tones hinting at attempts at projecting control, slightly laced with germinating hysteria, spurred by the constant stream of thought. She has so much to say, this girl, so much hold to sway, and it interests him - the blink-and-you-miss-it hints of vitriol in her words, the creme-in-coffee jut of her lips around her syntax.  _So much to say_ and she hasn’t yet figured out that behind her molars is where her will sits, not the  _beat beat beating_ of the heart she is religiously holding on to.

He  _shivers_ , and it is glorious.

That night, he comes to the image of her mouth around his cock, strangely fixated on the divine Rorschach blots of her imagined lipstick stains.

(He has learned never to deny himself, except for when absolutely necessary).

(Justification  _limits_ ).

 

 

 

_“You’re absolutely terrified of what you’re capable of, aren’t you? You tremble at the thought, the hint of it every time you wipe the steam off your mirror,” a whisper, tremulous and ravenous, hot against the shell of her ear. “Sweetheart, the only thing that should scare you is punishment, if that. Because being punished means you’re not in the absolute position to dole it out.”  
_

_“I’m—It’s—’m_ _not,” she breathes out, lungs compressed and stomach hollow. It’s an admission, shot through with practiced resignation and the anticipation,_ finally, finally, the moment’s arrived, _she is not at all terrified. “I’m not.”_

_“Aren’t you?  
_

 

 

 

He sees her again at a pre-debate dinner, all dolled-up and  _magnetising._ Her otherwise riotous hair is done in 1950s curls, face bare save for the filled in brows and the matte maroon of her mouth. The soft peach of her cocktail dress is expensive against the brown of her skin—except, it’s not exactly  _brown,_ it’s  _earthy,_ it’s  _kayumanggi._

This is what he’s learned about her over the past three days: she graduated first in her class, followed closely by that sarcastic Malfoy kid interning for them, Ivy League, from an upper-middle class family, half-American and half-something, overlooked because they thought her neither here or there until she left in a hail of gunfire, school records and recommendation letters and academic superiority.

They don’t get to ignore Hermione Granger, he thinks she’s decided, they don’t get to pass her over for not being one thing  _enough,_ or being another  _too much_ , not when the diaspora they forced on her is equal parts heavy and unknown.

He sits next to her at dinner, dressed meticulously to complement her. He is bold blacks and crisp whites, the only break in the maroon vest of his $6 000 three-piece suit. Up close, she is electric, and opinionated, and  _electric_. She wavers, sometimes, when she talks, her voice breaks over the things she believes in on a fundamental level, like—she feelstoo much, feels  _fully_ , hasn’t yet understood that emotion is not always called for.

_No matter, she will learn._

 

 

 

 _He follows her eyes as she scans the room, his knife-quick gaze falling unceremoniously upon the cold, harsh face of that irritating kid, coiffed hair and pastel bowtie and expensive manners, that Malfoy boy who got a paid internship because of his father. He had heard, of course, that Hermione and that Draco, they’re somehow involved,_ it’s complicated, Mr. Riddle, let it go,  _but—_

 _“Come upstairs with me,” he demands, menacing in its quiet and the shivers it leaves. He knows Malfoy is watching, and so he leans_ closer,  _his lashes grazing over her brow bone. She knows, by now, knows well enough that he always gets what he wants._

_He undresses her lazily, leaves her shivering in nothing but flimsy lace, all tawny skin and Malfoy’s teeth marks on her hipbones. He kisses her hard, bruising on a whim, he understands the nuance of excess. Her lipstick is smeared over her mouth and his, clotting blood red and feral. His fingers trail over her body, following haze and a strange surge of wanting, between her breasts, over her stomach, further down, followed by teeth and mouth and tongue._

_He presses a kiss on the smooth, dusky skin of her thighs before spreading her open to find her slick and wanting. He caresses her slowly, eyes trained on her face, the red creeping in, the abandon, the control she is signing over to him for safe-keeping. Her breathing stutters when he takes her into his mouth, groans when he adds a finger, two, pumping them in and out of her as his mouth ravages her._

_“Say my name,” he groans against her, the sound reverberating. “Come on, sweetheart, say it.” He moves his fingers faster, curling them on every hitched moan.  
_

_She stays quiet, resolute, keeps what he’s demanding of her under her tongue._

_Her back arches as he moves faster, a little wilder and crawling with something a little closer to savagery, and he relishes how she thrashes between his sheets and his body, against his open mouth, it’s—an_ answer _, almost, to the multiple choice question he asked by fingers and teeth, it’s—he’s—she still_ hasn’t  _said his name._

_Tom crawls up her body and thrusts his tongue inside her mouth, all the while pumping his fingers inside her. He will not be left to second-guess the spillage, the hidden narrative of the long-ago rug burn mark of somebody else’s name between her teeth, and he turns them over, tugging her into a sitting position and dragging her by the hips above his mouth._

_He has learned never to deny himself, except for when it is absolutely necessary. She will learn it too. It is but a matter of time._

 

 

 

The room is nondescript, the lighting reduced to a single low voltage spotlight overhead. The blonde in front of him is seething, drenched in sweat and blood, and it doesn’t matter that they’re on the same side of the fence, it doesn’t matter that this boy will be important someday, no, because Tom Riddle will always get what he wants.

He is a fixture in shadow, wolfish in the swinging light. “You see, Malfoy, I don’t go into things half-assed, and it bothers me, truly it does, that you’re being this obstinate about it.”

“Fuck off, Riddle. I have no goddamn idea what you’re on about,” he all but spits out, saliva and DNA trickling. 

The movement off the wall is quick, mercury and heat, he is bloodshot eyes and the weight of possession absent and wanted across his shoulders, and he cannot plausibly deny this, not  _yet,_ but it is an occupational hazard, he  _punches_ him, his fist connecting against his jaw, his ring scraping skin off the younger man’s mouth.

Nobody had wanted Riddle  _before_ , and it’s all the same.

It just  _annoys_ him, really, it is but a small irritating splinter, that what’s stopping her now is this sad, pathetic trust fund shit, and—

It’s all the same, really. If she will not want him, she will fear him. 


End file.
